A samurai-era post town on a stone-paved hill
Magome is a post town on the Nakasendo, the old mountain road between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto, where travelers once stopped for the night. Walk up its stone-paved slope eating gohei mochi, mashed rice on a skewer grilled with walnut and sesame sauce, to a lookout over Mt. Ena. From Nagoya, it is about 50 minutes by limited express to Nakatsugawa, then 25 minutes by bus.
A teahouse halfway up the slope that grills gohei mochi as small round dumplings on a skewer, glazed with walnut and sesame sauce, so they are easy to eat as you climb. It closes when they sell out.
A restaurant where you can sit down to gohei mochi with handmade soba and chestnut sticky rice, the simple mountain food of the Kiso Valley. A good place for lunch after strolling the town.
Houses with wooden lattices line the stone-paved slope, with a waterwheel turned by the stream and a lookout at the top facing Mt. Ena; bottom to top takes about 30 minutes on foot. From here, a 9 km trail over the pass leads to Tsumago, another post town, in 2.5 to 3 hours, and a service will send your bags ahead (1,000 yen a bag, late March to November).
A museum on the site of the birthplace of Shimazaki Toson, one of Japan's great modern novelists. His novel Before the Dawn portrays life in this post town as Japan opened up to the West, and his belongings and manuscripts are on display.
The site of a waki-honjin, an inn where feudal lords and officials stayed, now a museum of the tools and daily life of the post-town days. It shows how the town worked when the highway was in use.